Untermenschen: A History of Targeting Others for Inequality, Hatred and Suffering

Hundreds march in torchlight parade condemning Jews! Non-citizens are denounced as vermin! Sick and disabled ridiculed!These scenes which are occurring throughout America and Europe today are scarily familiar to similar scenes in America and Europe in the 1930s when the Nazis and their allies identified certain populations as Untermenschen, or less than human, and marked them for enslavement and/or elimination. It also is similar to scenes leading up to the pogroms that occurred in various countries in Europe for centuries.This book highlights the history of antisemitism and mistreatment of other targeted groups over centuries in Europe and in the United States. It grew out of interviews with nine survivors of the nazi atrocities who asked to spread their stories in the hope that knowledge of such things would ensure that they would never happen again. They were concerned that as years passed, memories fade and hatred would take root again.Arthur Flug, a Holocaust educator, and Louis Grumet, a public policy wonk, have joined together to produce a work that reminds us that targeting "others" for inequality can grow into discrimination and acts of hatred, which can grow into final solutions which harm and indeed kill millions of victims.Using the testimonies of Holocaust survivors who were targeted as teenagers and anti-racial and religious governmental practices of 17th through 20th centuries, the authors present a clear picture of what may be happening again in America and Europe, and its potential outcome. It is a reminder that for evil to happen, good folks have only to be silent! Read more